


Sherlock Holmes and Death's Quiet Keeper

by Sculpts



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extreme angst, Grief/Mourning, I'm warning you now this is awful I'm awful, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Inspired by Fanart, Loss, POV Sherlock Holmes, Tread With Caution, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sculpts/pseuds/Sculpts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has always assumed he’ll keep a level head in times of extreme personal tragedy. As happens often, he was right. Not quite to expectation, he is doing so without the hasty subsequent fallback on narcotics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock Holmes and Death's Quiet Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> _“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him… The land of tears is so mysterious.”_  
>  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince  
> \-- alessiapelonzi

When John Watson first sets foot inside the flat, Sherlock is about to ask him to _please shut the door, the crossbreeze is likely to interfere with the_ \-- but the words don't leave his mouth. He’s barely formed the first syllable before the sentence and the experiment disappear clean out of his mind. Instead, he is fixated on deducing the exact nature of the death in John’s face. Exactly what is meant by the dullness in his eyes. It’s not real death, not in the way that makes a man look like a corpse (he’s seen plenty of that, if it still startled him now he’d be in trouble), but instead it seems to steal something. It robs something of John, puts him forward as a shell, as though he’s drained out through some invisible hole like Bainbridge had and Sholto nearly did.

It’s only because John turns to look at him that Sherlock abandons the task of looking for blood. _You see but you do not observe_ , John’s usual bad habit, is temporarily cured, if only for the fact that John doesn't seem to _see_ at all. His eyes drift in Sherlock’s direction but don’t settle, hover like they're separated by some vast expanse, standing at twilight on either side of a lake under which conditions John can't quite summon the energy to focus on his silhouette.

“They’re gone.”

“Who are, John?”

John drops his jaw to speak - stops. Sherlock is almost motivated to move to him for the way the air seems to swell up and stick in his throat earnestly enough to prove a choking hazard. Fiercely, Sherlock hunts the distress, looks for signs of damage, not entirely convinced that life isn’t dripping from him in some secret ebb that might only be stopped if Sherlock were to act-- it isn’t necessary. He finds something else instead.

Oh. Oh, god. 

John’s hand is curled around it in loose approximation of a fist but there is no denying the shape formed by glimpses caught of white plastic through his fingers. A band. Small, just size enough to fit around a day old wrist. The first three numbers of today’s date peek out from between John’s index and middle fingers.

 

  


Sherlock has always assumed he’ll keep a level head in times of extreme personal tragedy. As happens often, he was right. Not quite to expectation, he is doing so without the hasty subsequent fallback on narcotics. 

The time between John Watson In The Doorway and John Watson Inside Out passed in something of a collection of moments. Remembered, it seems less like time and more like a series of tableaux, brief snapshots frozen in sequence to carry them from one point to the other. Perhaps they might stitch together later and paint some clearer picture but for now, while the present moment remains so vital (and so overwhelmingly meaningless), tableaux:

John’s shell standing silent. Sherlock doing the same. The breath trapped in John’s throat freeing itself only to catch on primed vocal chords and fall out in a staccato note, plain and unvetted, without inflection. The sound catching John off guard. Lastly, before the picture fades into something too wretched for analysis, John’s sudden, horrible return to awareness.

 

  


This isn’t his area. This has never been his area. People don't come to Sherlock Holmes when faced with the sudden and merciless bottoming of their lives - ah, no, wrong. Sherlock Holmes is exactly who they address, but not in this capacity. Never in this capacity. He stands on the other side of tinted glass. He is not confided in, he consults. People come to him, give him their disaster and allow him to run around with it until it makes sense. Fix it if he can. Equal and equivalent exchange.

He cannot fix things for John Watson. There is no doing anything about this. The death in John’s eyes, Sherlock has come to realise, doesn't belong to the man. It was left for him to hold onto for want of anywhere else for it to go. In turn, in that exact same way, Sherlock has been left to hold onto John.

He does. He does, not thinking for now about four turned two, three turned one. He does, knowing that tomorrow, the next day, perhaps the day after will bring about his turn to work out what it means to have lost. For now, in place of that, he watches John as John watches the wall over his shoulder. He watches the immovability of endings dance and dry on John’s skin and his own shirtsleeve. He wonders, humbled and quiet and suddenly frightened, where John might be. 

He holds on. 

Somewhere, buried beneath years and revelations and fresher pains, John keeps hold of _his_ death too.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came about in response to [alessiapelonzi](http://alessiapelonzi.tumblr.com/)'s beautiful fanart, [Grief](http://alessiapelonzi.tumblr.com/post/84990491400). I hope I don't offend by sharing it or with its content!


End file.
